Special report: Pay-for-play.

Against The (cash) Flow

As Revenue Streams Into College Coffers, Some Athletes Are Clamoring For Their Cut Of The Profits

February 23, 1997|By Andrew Bagnato, Tribune Staff Writer.

If Andre Woolridge had a dime for every time someone stopped him on the street in Iowa City to say, "Great game last night" . . .

No, make it a nickel. He's not greedy.

How about a nickel for every time someone has paid $17 for a seat at Carver-Hawkeye Arena, where Woolridge performs before sellout crowds as a star guard for the University of Iowa? And how about a nickel for every time someone has asked him to sign this year's $14-a-copy Hawkeyes hoops media guide, whose cover shows Woolridge firing a behind-the-back pass to teammate Jess Settles?

It would be a lot of nickels. But Woolridge has been told there simply isn't enough money to pay college athletes. Not even a nickel.

Woolridge has done the math, and it doesn't add up.

"You find yourself in the position of being a star athlete, on ESPN every night and known all over town by other students, kids asking for your autograph," he said. "But then you get home and you don't have enough money to wash your clothes, and then you wonder why (student-athletes) deal with agents. Guys are taking money just to make ends meet."

Woolridge, an English major set to graduate this spring, will put poverty behind him if he plays in the NBA. But he raises an issue that has become the biggest headache in college sports: compensation for student-athletes.

It grabbed headlines last month when the NCAA gave athletes the right to work, acknowledging for the first time the growing gap between athletic scholarship packages and the true cost of attending college. And it's timely to ponder as the NCAA's biggest cash producer, the Division I men's basketball tournament, dominates the national sporting consciousness next month.

The NCAA's rote response--we won't pay athletes--hasn't changed, nor has its argument that a free ride to college is payment enough. But in a high-stakes age when the NCAA reaps $1.725 billion in television rights fees from the hoops tournament and bowl alliance games pay $8.5 million per team, some people sense that a scholarship with a face value of $20,000 a year is not fair compensation.

"The NCAA is trying to hold back a real economic force," said Duke law professor John Weistart, an expert on college sports law. "These kids are celebrities and they have real celebrity value, but the NCAA refuses to recognize that. That force has gone from significant to being enormous."

The pay-for-play call is coming from locker rooms and classrooms and editorial board rooms.

"When we started to study this 10 years ago, for somebody to talk about pay for college athletes, you were almost on the lunatic fringe," said Brian Goff, a Western Kentucky University economist. "Nobody really viewed it as a serious thing. I see more editorials, more serious discussions of `Is it coming to this? Do they need to be paid?'

"Over the next 10 to 15 years, the NCAA faces a challenge, and it hasn't faced these sorts of challenges in a long time. It has been one of the most successful cartels in the world. The money that's involved, both internally and externally, is just becoming enormous, and it's getting out of their control."

One amount remains firmly under control: player compensation. Institutions and individuals are cashing in. Notre Dame sold the rights to its home football telecasts to NBC for $35 million, and Northwestern football coach Gary Barnett turned a single Rose Bowl season into a 12-year contract worth a reported $5 million. But the athletes' financial share hasn't changed. They get tuition, room, board and the cost of books. The neediest may also receive up to $2,000 in federal Pell Grants and are eligible for payments from a $15 million NCAA fund for clothing and emergency trips home. Twenty years ago, the NCAA did away with a $15-a-month "incidentals" payment to athletes.

But what about a cut of the profits? NCAA Executive Director Cedric Dempsey said he rarely passes a day without responding to that question.

"People look at the $1.725 billion basketball contract and say, `With all that money, why can't they do this and that?' " he said.

Consider some of these numbers:

- $1.725 billion. That's how much CBS paid to televise the massively popular Division I men's basketball tournament through 2002.

- $75 million. That's how much Host Communications Inc. has agreed to pay the NCAA for rights to market its name.

- $50 million. That's how much one city reportedly was willing to offer in incentives to lure the NCAA to move its headquarters from suburban Kansas City.

- $2,500. That's how much the NCAA will allow a student-athlete to earn each school year in part-time work.

The last figure is the smallest, but it might be the most important. It represents a historic shift by the NCAA, which acknowledged at its convention in January that some athletes require more than a so-called full ride to get by.